Tuesday, November 27, 2012

A Traumatic Couple of Days

The one incident-free item on the menu.

Do you ever have days when things just go
wrong and go wrong and go wrong?You think, “Well, I can’t imagine what else could happen!” and then you immediately find out.I’ve had
terrible battery karma lately.First my glow in the dark alarm clock batteries went.The clock required AAA’s and
fortunately, I had two (antiques, I later realized.)I put them in, and was pleased with myself for being so efficient.The batteries lasted a grand total of
two days.Fortunately, this was
not an emergency, as I have a little phalanx of (non-glow in the dark) clocks
in my bedroom, all poised to make sure I get out of bed on time on Sunday
mornings. However, later that evening, the batteries on my furnace thermostat
went out.I opened it up,
confident that with my supply of various sizes of batteries, this would be no
problem.However, guess what!AAA’s again!It seems like not that many things take this size, so that
made it also seem like the battery gods were aligned against me.And this time it was more of an
emergency, as with no thermostat, there would be no heat, and it was getting
pretty cold. I joggled the batteries around a bit, giving a small boost to
their lease on life, and then the next day, Margaret and I forged out through the
winds and rains, battling the elements to get the necessary electrical gear.I hoped that that would be that,
battery-wise!But such was not to
be.

I was baking bread and a cake for my dinner
with The Twins, and as I was using my wonderful electric scale to measure out the
500 gm flour for the bread, I was thinking that it seemed like an awfully lot
of flour.Then, I measured out the
various dried fruits for the cake.No way these fruits are going to fit into this little cake pan, even if
there were no flour, sugar, or eggs, I told myself.So I weighed a cup of water. It weighed 162 gm instead of the usual 227. Aaaaaaaargh!Converting to cups, I remeasured the bead flour, and it was close enough
to the right amount.But not quite
right.I could add some more water
to fix the bread problem, but the fruits were waaaaaay off. Converting again, I calculated how many
cups total of fruit I needed, and found that I had about 30% too much.Well, I can save the extra fruit for
some future cake.Fortunately, I
had not put in any the eggs, oil or sugar.The scale’s battery must have been in it’s death throes as I was measuring flour for the bread, and just doingagonal breathingas I measured the fruit.I have lots of non-AAA batteries, so I opened the scale up
to find that it had one of those funny rectangular biggish ones. I had a few of
those, but then I couldn’t figure out how to get the old one out!I called my aunt, who reassured me.“The Twins are clever.They will be able to fix it.”(This turned out to be true.)“But I’m cooking now!That
will be too late,” I wailed.I had
expected to be cooking until about seven p.m., but, given all my unexpected
culinary problems, I finally dropped into bed closer to midnight.

No more measuring problems with my dinner, but
when I dropped my chopped onions from their storage container into the sizzling
oil, instead of the expected “fwoosh” sound, there was a “clunk.” There in the pan was the lid of the
container, being sautéed along with the onions. I managed to get it out without ruining either it or the onions. The rest of the dinner preparation was
happily uneventful.

My electronic scale has one of those horrible little batteries the size of a quarter, but it turns out there are seemingly dozens of batteries the same physical size but all with different voltages, so a flat battery is a major calamity entailing multiple trips to the store to buy, return, replace, return etc. until I get it right. Needless to say my eyesight isn't good enough to read the miniscule information on the battery itself.

Your food photography is fabulous. I wish you would write a cookbook and illustrate it with your own photos. Sign me up for a first edition.